I talk about how to save money, and my life

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In the actual world we single parents don’t generally have adequate money. Tabloids may tempt you with weirdly angled pictures and exciting posts on single parents having outings abroad, super-size televisions and each mod con going all paid by their benefits cheque every week. But practically how they figure out to do this I am really not sure.

Being a single mum for over 14 years, I have not succeeded in giving my kids the best of everything. They have never been without clothes, food or love but I have never had thriftless shopping sprees or anything of that sort. I haven’t been yet successful in taking my two children on a holiday. Their father working a job that pays better has taken them skiing a couple of times and they also went on school trips but that all has been the limit.

This year it improved… just a little bit. We bought a tent. I took a trip with my partner a couple of weeks ago and absolutely adored it. Adored it so much that we reserved some more days away again for previous week. This time round, my little son came with. Not bad going, but at 5 years of age, the poor guy had his first time away with his mother and that too in a tent. If you are pondering as to why only the youngest came, I did invite my daughter too but seemingly it’s not what she likes.

The weather was really nice with daylight, feasted on BBQ’s and we had lots of laughs. We didn’t require costly food, huge swimming pools or costly landscape. We had time, long walks and a wonderful time this summer proving that money is not necessarily everything.

My dear old mother is mentioned many a times here. One of her pieces of advice I have been given in the previous week is to keep her memory alive. So exactly like my father who is executing this by chatting up her picture, I will go ahead and continually babble on regarding her in topics. The things our mothers teach are priceless tops and suggestions you won’t receive elsewhere.

Trending on the old internet is an article revolving around a shop helper at a supermarket who denied serving a client till the client ceased their cell phone conversation. This blog is couple of years old and is here if you wish to go through it.

As a part time shop helper I can empathize. We interact with such people every day who continue on with their chats over the phone as if the shop helper is nonexistent. They give their money, take the change and if it’s your fortunate day you may receive a little nod of acknowledgement at the end. I am not sure if its only technology life where all living now has brought this on or if as parents we are on some degree failing at showing our kids manners past please and thank you.

We educate our kids to say please and thank you but how much far do we go or should we be headed? There is sharing toys, alternating turns and maybe a couple of more than I cannot quite think of at this point. In past times way before my mother taught me that was regarding taking your hats off when within or whenever a burial car passes by, oh and you must not overtake a burial car also.

Techno life is constantly changing, advancing and creating. It influences not just how we get things done but also how we act. For instance when we could only receive emails at either the work or house computer so it in a way kept the email world at one side. Then we could receive them on the go with our mobile phones. As this technology advanced, it didn’t come accompanying guidelines or standards like it is not polite to check your email while being at the checkout counter at supermarket. There are new unspoken guidelines and manners we need to get a handle of, once we make sense of them that is.

When my mom was raising me, she said to me that in life she may not have the capacity to give me best of all things, didn’t have a luxurious lifestyle herself and didn’t have degrees falling off her ears but if you possess good manners, you will be wealthier than the wealthy or dexterous people in life (Definitely she neither do I mean by this that wealthy or intelligent people don’t possess good manners, you know what I mean).

Manners are essential. Manners don’t cast anything. They can create a huge difference to how other people react to you. As the modern techno world takes us to more and more exhilarating and at times even frightening things, it’s upon us parents to figure out the “new” manners. It’s upon us to acquaint our kids with these additional manners that can create a difference. And also assess if our personal manners are up to the mark.